


Endeavor

by trufflemores



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 2.20, Angst, Family, Friendship, Gen, Rupture, reaction fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 11:54:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6802756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trufflemores/pseuds/trufflemores
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2.20. Cisco built Forty-Eight suits before Barry walked into his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Endeavor

The first suit combusts.

It takes Cisco a dozen tries just to produce one that doesn't promptly catch fire. After thirty attempts, he has one that holds up to more than six exposures of intense heat. By forty-eight, he has The Suit.

Cisco wants to mass-produce it, but every generation puts him farther and farther away from that goal. He starts with simple materials, but those suits burn, disintegrate, and wear thin. They aren't strong enough. He has to go bigger. He scans physics' textbooks for suggestions, back-to-school mentality sustaining him in the aftermath of the particle accelerator explosion.

Star Labs was quiet during those days. Over three months, the faculty vanished. Mercury Labs accommodated the influx of formerly reputable scientists, welcoming the opportunity to retain some of the brilliant minds which had created the accelerator in the first place.

Mercury was one of the few facilities willing to accept anyone branded _Star Labs_ above a certain tier. Administrative personnel resigned, aware that they had staked their reputation on a project which ended seventeen lives; which devastated a city, causing spontaneous fires for hours after the initial explosion and power outages for a month; which gave fuel to the public sentiment that colliding atoms was not only a colossal waste of time and money but a lethal enterprise with unforgivable consequences. In one fell swoop, the professional lives of too many good scientists were ruined. Cisco never saw their names appear in scientific circles again.

At times, Cisco had been tempted to join the transient sea of employees withdrawing from Star Labs. It put a lump in his throat to watch entire departments disappear. As Star Labs shut down, the hallways became quieter and quieter and quieter, until Cisco could walk from one end of the building to the other without encountering a single person.

Looking into abandoned offices, Cisco felt an anguish unlike anything he'd ever felt before, a sense of loss on par with family. Unable to cope with the isolation – without even Hartley's torments or Ronnie's good humor – Cisco fell back on the one thing at his disposal: technology. There were hundreds of unclaimed tools and dozens of vacant work stations. Before the explosion, Cisco's access had been restricted: he had to share the machinery with fellow scientists in pursuit of equally important goals. Now everything was available: full-time, unrestricted, no authorization required.

Cisco tells Dr. Wells and Caitlin that he's working on The Suit for several reasons – to help firefighters, to rebuild Star Labs' rep – but his primary motivation is that The Suit is the ultimate distraction. The Suit becomes a reason to go to work every morning, to stop looking for other human beings and focus solely on the fabric under his fingertips. No matter how many times an errant needle punctures the tender flesh of his thumb or a chemical spill merits a hasty trip to the chemical-burn shower, he doesn't give up on it. In fact, the longer the project takes, the more intense Cisco becomes about it.

The more _animated_ he becomes.

Living in a graveyard of science, Cisco finds new life in a single seed. It does not grow easily – at times, Cisco is certain it will not grow at all, resigned to failure – but he does not give up on it. And finally, after firing round after round of heat from a prototypal heat gun at it, The Suit does not disintegrate. Not allowing himself to become hopeful, Cisco douses it in chemicals, sets it ablaze, and waits forty-five minutes for it to dissolve. The flames dance across the skin of The Suit, but they never penetrate to the inner shielding, skating around the surface like water on windshield.

As he looks at The Suit, Cisco is unaware of the tears on his face, but he is aware of his own grin, a single triumphant _yes!_ punctuating the silence of the Labs at two-thirty-three AM, September 9, 2014, as The Suit burns and burns and burns but does not die.

Cisco told Dr. Wells and Caitlin that The Suit was a model, a blueprint for future suits. The goal was not to create a piece of art: it was to create a functional prototype to benefit firefighters and other individuals working with hazardous or flammable chemicals. The Suit would die if it was singular; it needed to be reproducible to be valuable.

Try though he might, Cisco can't reproduce it. The costs alone are exorbitant: on a modest, post-accelerator explosion budget, acquiring enough tripolymer fabric to make a _glove_ is challenging, let alone an entire suit. It takes almost five thousand dollars to make one full body suit. Worse still, it's time- and labor-intensive: Model Forty-Eight took almost four weeks to sew together.

The only reason Model Forty-Eight ever makes it outside the confines of Cisco's imagination is Dr. Wells' generosity: once he returns to the facilities full-time after a lengthy sojourn at the hospital, he sponsors Cisco's venture out-of-pocket. Cisco tries to beg off his charity – he can't bear the mental anguish of depriving a formerly great man of every penny – but Dr. Wells insists with his usual enigmatic smile belying an unshakable confidence: _I believe in you, Cisco_.

Cisco doesn't disappoint him.

Even Caitlin arches an eyebrow when he shows it to her. "Why red?" is her first question.

Cisco rolls his eyes and doesn't say _to hide the blood_ , knowing she might not appreciate the glib. He tells her that it's red for fire, red for the cross as iconic as _do no_ harm, red for the expansion of galaxies and the luster of low-burning heat. He doesn't tell her – doesn't _know_ – that it's red for Mars, too: _God of War_. It's red for blood. It's red for death.

If he knew what it would be used for, he would never have accepted that first preemptive check from Dr. Wells. He would never have picked up those gloves and thought, _I can do more with these_. He would never have entertained the idea of creating something with the potential to do as much harm as good.

Instead, he creates The Suit, introducing Model Forty-Eight into the world, and lets it acquire dust while he pursues Model Forty-Nine.

A month later, Barry Allen wakes up.

It changes Cisco's world: suddenly, the Labs aren't quiet anymore. He's used to playing music, talking into his phone, firing guns, but there is something almost overwhelming about the presence of another human being after almost four months of virtually solitary existence. Something _exciting_ , too: whereas Caitlin retreats, startled, like a winter-over castaway in Antarctica ( _you weren't part of my world, you missed the cold, you don't know silence_ ), Cisco feels a certain joy at having another person around Star Labs.

The Labs come to life again. It's gradual – stops, starts, stalls – but they make it work. Even Caitlin adjusts to having Barry around. Dr. Wells seems enlivened by the experience.

Cisco has to suppress a sudden jealousy as they drift towards Barry, Wells' responsiveness eclipsed by Caitlin's. Caitlin leans in, shoulder gradually brushing up against Barry's, a contact that is noticeable in the former absence of all closeness. Caitlin gravitates towards Barry like she doesn't know that warmth doesn't always burn but can't resist the feeling; like she wants to be near another human being but enjoys the cold and silence and darkness, too; like it's been too long since someone else told her she was a human and not a castaway. There is a camaraderie in the storm, in the stillness, in the snow, a camaraderie which breaks down as Caitlin drifts towards the outsider and Cisco watches their winter-over finally end.

It should be a joyful time – and it is; watching Barry run is nothing if not exhilarating – but it's also a trying moment in Cisco's life. It's too much like Before, when there were people in the Labs, when the future was incandescent, alive, when nothing could stop them. Cisco almost retreats – but every time Barry walks into the room, he feels _okay_ , like their trio is complete again, like they'd been waiting for a Hartley or a Ronnie and found a Barry instead.

So Cisco puts him in one of the earliest prototypes of The Suit, sufficient for a test run. When the time comes to face down Clyde Mardon, however, Cisco looks at Model Forty-Eight and remembers it burning that night six weeks ago. He thinks about Barry running with lightning at his heels and thunder in his wake, and he realizes that the only bearer meant to wear The Suit is not a human. It's a speedster.

Before Barry, Cisco was a little selfish: his toys were _his_ toys, graciously passed on to others with the intent of being returned to their rightful owner. But after Barry puts on The Suit, Cisco realizes that it was always meant to belong to the wearer. It was meant to be given away, unreturned, away from its creator, sent forth to survive.

Barry takes care of it and Cisco can't deny a certain pleasure that it causes a "red streak" effect on camera, soliciting Barry's first nickname: _The Streak_. Barry hates it – understandably; it has a less than PG connotation to it – but Cisco enjoys the easygoing time of being heroes without ever knowing what it's like to _suffer_.

Cisco finds pleasure naming their adversaries as well: _Weather Wizard_ dies before making his debut, but _Multiplex_ makes his mark before departing and _The Mist_ is still alive and well. It's fun: Cisco is the eyes and ears and Barry is the feet. Caitlin holds them together, balancing Cisco's panic whenever Barry gets hurt and keeping him light on his feet with her banter. It's so good to have her back that Cisco almost thinks this is _better_ than before, but he knows that's not true.

It's better than the cold, than winter: it's summer.

But Cisco feels an undying attachment to winter, to that cold, that interlude, and The Suit is one way of preserving it. Caitlin's affirmation of Barry's health is so compelling to Cisco that he focuses nearly all of his energy on The Suit when Barry and it come back to Star Labs. He checks for tears, for burns, for any marks, fretting over the beatings it takes while outwardly projecting concern largely for Barry and less so for The Suit.

Model Forty-Eight is a remnant from winter, but more than that, it's a living memory of triumph in the midst of profound darkness. When Barry gets his blood on it, the effect is desacralizing. In a neutral deadpan, Cisco lashes out at him: _You got blood on my suit_.

Barry doesn't understand, quips back _I'm sure some of it was his_ , and they have no further altercations over The Suit until they meet Bette Sans Souci.

Cisco falls in love. He falls in love the way you do when you haven't hugged another human being in nearly nine months, when a smile is a gesture of incomparable delight, when a laugh is almost too pure for existence. He never really falls in love with _Bette_ , only Bette Sans Souci, _Plastique!_ But oh, how he loves her anyway: she is beautiful, like life, like sunrise, and he half wants to worship her and half wants to anguish over the possibility of never seeing her again.

But like the sun, she is a destructive force: and it is to her that, at last, the suit which would burn but not die succumbs. She destroys Model Forty-Eight.

Barry doesn't have the ability to bring the remnants home and the sadness lodges in Cisco's throat until he wakes up in the middle of the night, weeping. It shouldn't matter – _it's just a suit_ – but it does, because it kept him alive when no one and nothing else would. It mattered. It wasn't just too much money on too little budget: it was one of their own, the last members of Star Labs _after_ the explosion _before_ Barry, a winter-over security blanket.

Cisco didn't know how much he needed _that suit_ until it died.

In the early morning, in the ashes, in the pre-dawn, Cisco draws in a shuddering breath and vows, _I will not let it be the last one_.

Forty-Seven suffices when Bette makes a run for it and someone has to stop her. It's not Forty-Eight, and Cisco worries about what could happen if it caught fire mid-run ( _he's not going into a fire it should be fine_ ), but the suit holds up. It is not The Suit, but it's the immediate predecessor, the penultimate breath before victory, and Cisco feels a strange mixture of pride and revulsion for sending it out into the field.

It meets an appropriately vulgar death: Captain Cold and Heat Wave destroy it with twin blasts from their respective guns. The mangled remains make it back to Star Labs, intact; so does their bearer. It should be a win, but the air tastes acrid like defeat.

With surprisingly little reservation, Cisco gives Barry a third suit: Forty-Six. He modifies it first, stylizing it in the memory of Forty-Eight. It gets an emergency glucose injector. It gets a thicker undercoat. It gets the same ridges along the gloves for traction and shock absorbers in the back.

It survives Eiling's kinetic needles, albeit not intact. Were it Forty-Eight, Cisco might rage against the damage done to it, but it is Forty-Six, and he can forgive. He makes necessary repairs, already keeping in mind that it is a suit marked for death.

It feels poetically right that it dies soon thereafter: Eiling hits Barry with phosphoric acid, disintegrating the suit, its ugly remains finding a nest alongside its successor in a tucked away corner at Star Labs.

Barry's confrontations – and subsequent destructions – of Cisco's suits necessitate drastic action. Part of him wants to saddle Barry with the responsibility; another side of him reels at the thought. The duty is his – and his alone.

Ever since Forty-Eight, Cisco worked to recreate a new suit, a _better_ suit. A replica leaves an ache in his chest, but the idea of outdoing it – about making something a worthy successor – helps absolve some of the anguish he feels over it. So he creates Forty-Nine: to replace the degraded remains of Forty-Seven and Forty-Six, entombed in a forgotten box in Star Labs, holding place for The Suit which Cisco will never be able to put back; to forgive Barry fully for its destruction; to move forward with creation, with learning, with _life_.

Forty-Nine is magnificent. It holds up to everything, _including_ time travel. It is stronger, leaner, tougher than Forty-Eight. It has more upgrades, too, packing every millimeter with technology, life-saving technology which brings Barry back to life (albeit, necessitating some serious TLC: the defibrillator shocked the whole system, but Forty-Nine is tough, durable). Caitlin and Dr. Wells initially resisted Cisco's insistence on a defibrillator; the stakes of malfunction were severe, and the necessity of it seemed overcautious. But Cisco insisted, and they trusted him, and Barry lives because of it.

Forty-Nine is seen on the streets; Forty-Nine is seen on top of the world, racing towards the singularity; Forty-Nine is seen afterwards in the quiet corners of existence, wounded, untraceable, as its wearer lone-wolfs his way into oblivion. _The Flash_ vanishes, reappearing intermittently before disappearing equally quickly, that familiar blur of red Cisco's fleeting interaction with Forty-Nine.

In the wake of the singularity, he loses touch with Caitlin. He loses touch with Barry, too. Without Dr. Wells – _Eobard Thawne_ – his life is thrown into a deeper darkness than it has ever known.

There is only one response.

Cisco makes another suit.

While Forty-Nine paints the night red, Cisco works tirelessly on another suit in the cortex, aware that he is the sole survivor of an earth-changing quake. He thinks, _We were all struck by that lightning_ because no one walked away from that night unscathed. Looking around, Cisco pauses, overcome, because it doesn't seem right that he is the only one still standing.

It helps to focus on the suit. To breathe life into something, like kindling a fire, focus, focus, focus, until finally a spark is born.

Before it ever makes a test run, Cisco knows Fifty is destined to live forever – or die spectacularly. It cannot fall anywhere in between: it's too powerful. It will not just paint the night red but _electrify_ it, a blazon of hope, a siren of victory.

Forty-Nine is the chanting crowd and the way Barry ducks his head, overcome; Fifty is the echo, magnifying the sound until it is no longer forgettable but unbreakable: _Flash! Flash! Flash!_ _ **Flash!**_ Forty-Nine is the love Team Flash pours into Central City; Fifty is the love letters it writes back.

Fifty gets the new emblem, the white moon. Cisco aims for Lunar rather than Martian, tidal, predictable, temperate. It also gets upgrades that defy even Cisco's wildest expectations of the original suit. It's the pinnacle of Cisco's abilities, the peak of his creations. It surpasses the cold and heat guns; it surpasses Forty-Eight and Forty-Nine; it even surpasses the drones. It is a masterpiece.

When Cisco finally presents it to Barry, it feels like spring, rebirth, new life: like winter is over, like the worst days have passed and from the ashesthey can rise again. They lost _Ronnie_ , but they refuse to let it destroy them; Cisco refuses to die, to drift away, to lose faith. It's been six months, and Cisco finds it fitting that Fifty debuts on the same day as Forty-Eight did: twins from opposite seasons, red and white moons, fight and fire, the onward rush towards the horizon.

Fifty endures more than Forty-Eight, more than Forty-Seven and Forty-Six, more than Forty-Nine, even, its longest-lived predecessor. It endures time travel and dimension hopping and metahuman attacks on a scale Cisco has never had to deal with before. It pushes his upper limits – incorporating redundant technology in a skin-tight suit isn't exactly easy, especially when he has to keep in mind that a malfunction could trigger a fatal episode from incorporations such as the defibrillator – but Cisco meets the challenges.

It gives him new life, a reason to live, a reason to keep _going_. He has others – Dante, Caitlin, Barry, Joe and everyone at the precinct, Harry – but knowing that Fifty is front-lines in metahuman attacks, the very last line of defense Barry has when speed fails (and it always does; and it always will), it gives Cisco strength to know it's _his_ strength pitted against theirs. It redoubles his efforts to be part of the team. To be more than dependable: to be _exemplary_.

Cisco loves being part of the team. He loves that his technology saves lives. He loves that the suit is what everyone sees and that it is the closest millions of people will ever get to The Flash. He loves that Fifty survives the unendurable: that it survives encounters with Atom Smasher, Weather Wizard, Grodd, Zoom.

It survives _Zoom_.

Cisco sees that night in his head over and over and over again.

He thinks, _If the shock absorbers failed, Barry would have died_. The freefall from hundreds of feet to concrete nearly did, regardless, but the certainty of death translated into a chance when Cisco's suit cushioned the impact. That was all Fifty could handle: each successive punch Zoom laid on him broke bones, ruptured organs, and shattered any chance Barry had at taking him down. Fifty could only record the brutality; it could do nothing to stop it. When Zoom snapped his back, Cisco all but _felt_ it, looking at the suit monitors and realizing what happens in a stomach-turning second before the monitor recorded it precisely: _displacement, spinal column, code: red._

It's always red.

Fifty cradles Barry's broken body as Zoom drags him around town. Fifty appears on TV screens, documenting The Flash's fall from grace. Fifty endures puncture wounds as Zoom stabs Barry, a redundancy so cruel it makes bile rise in Cisco's throat, a crushing emotion surging through him like hatred, like _red_. He reaches for the gun and fires, unloading a speed-suppressing dart into Zoom's back.

As Zoom falls, Cisco is struck by his black suit. It's incredible, but it's not the red which doesn't hide blood; it's not the red which symbolizes healing, a cross; it's not the red which defines The Flash as surely as his speed. It's an abomination: good used for evil.

Cisco wants to destroy it, but he has to focus on Barry, helping wherever he can. The suit holds him together; Caitlin keeps him alive; and Cisco presses hands against the stab wounds, brings medical supplies, does whatever he can to save him.

When the dust settles, Cisco sits with Fifty. With a cold cloth he scrubs and scrubs and scrubs, drawing the stain of red out of the deeper contrast in the suit. He stitches up the tears, slow, methodic, precise, making sure to check every seam, every line, every contour for weakness. He spends nearly three hours removing and reapplying a fresh set of shock absorbers. He quietly resolves to double – no, _triple_ – layer them in the next suit.

Fifty-One has to be stronger. Cisco won't forget those bruises, continuous, brutal, total, across Barry's back and stomach. Not all of them were Zoom's creation. Many of them were, theoretically, avoidable.

Cisco intends to do better. He checks the suit over and over and over again, running his hands over every millimeter, smoothing, straightening, securing its integrity. When he can do no more, he repeats the process until the smell of blood disappears.

While Barry sleeps, recovering, Cisco thinks about burning the suit. He thinks about burning the enterprise. It's not worth losing Barry over. Barry is _part of them_ : he's one of the team. He's one of the family.

They winter-over together, surviving the cold, the darkness, the longing for light so keen it hurts his teeth. Barry is trapped in bed for four days. He takes his first step on the sixth day. By the seventh, he walks six steps – and crumples.

Cisco thinks about him in the suit a lot, then, how well Fifty complements him: how Fifty seems lonely on the shelf, needing its companion. The suit belongs to Cisco – always has, always will – but he's beginning to understand Barry when he says things like _our suit_. Cisco can see it. Fifty belongs _to_ him but belongs _on_ Barry.

Barry reclaims it within two weeks. Cisco thinks, _They suit each other_ and has to laugh. Fifty endures; so does Barry. No matter how much they go through, the suit survives. Cisco is proud and afraid at once, aware that no suit lasts forever, that there will come a challenge even Fifty cannot survive.

In the end, _Cisco_ destroys his last suit.

. o .

Holding onto the fragmented remains torn apart by the particle explosion, Cisco swallows hard. He thinks about the demise of Forty-Six and Forty-Seven, about the missing Forty-Eight, about the retired Forty-Nine. He thinks, _Fifty was supposed to endure_. He thinks, _Barry wasn't supposed to die._

He thinks, _I have to fix this_ and doesn't know how.

He thinks, _I have to try_ and wonders if this is how terrified Barry feels whenever he says it.

. o .

Holding onto the suit, Cisco closes his eyes and sees Barry.

The vision is so fleeting that Cisco thinks he imagined it. When it passes, he still cries, hunched over the last patch of Barry's armor like it'll somehow bring him back. He thinks about Caitlin and Dr. Wells, about Ronnie and Hartley, about everyone at Star Labs who left, who walked quietly out of his life. He thinks about the life he had _Before_ and the life he has _After_ , about what he can and cannot live with. He thinks about winter and summer and the seasons in between.

He holds onto the suit like a lifeline, and he feels Barry fifty-two universes away, sees him as clearly as if he were on Earth-1, and Cisco realizes that he's _alive._

Iris listens; Joe, aching, asks every hour if Cisco has seen anything else. Henry is silent, but Cisco knows he needs to know. To the best of his ability, Cisco looks for Barry. He gets better at it: the suit is a compass pointing towards him, directing Cisco's attention to the right corner of the multiverse. He gets good enough that even Harry's denial cannot hold up, and Iris and Cisco go after Barry on that other world.

. o .

Cisco almost doesn't dare believe that Barry is _real_.

It's like watching a vision come to life as Barry walks towards him. Cisco thinks, _You're not real_ even as every footstep closes the distance between them. _You're not real_ as Barry smiles at him. _You're not real_ until the very second Barry's arms come around him in a tight, welcome-home hug.

Cisco buries his face in Barry's shoulder, locks his arms around his back, and hugs him for almost twenty minutes.

. o .

Back home, Cisco watches Barry walk around with a new confidence to his step, almost visibly radiating power. He is aware of how unhesitatingly Barry moves, how every twitch and turn seems utterly deliberate. How direct his eyes are when he looks at Cisco, golden hints underneath the familiar green, a brightness to his grin that can only be described as _something more_.

So Cisco takes the hints the universe gives him, the canvas of Barry, and builds a new suit. It's sleek, bright, and simple. The brilliance of the red is warm, like sunrise, sunset; _like the article_ , Cisco thinks, wondering if he shouldn't play with fire, if he should let the future play out on its own.

But he trusts his instincts. He designs the suit and presents the finished product to Barry two weeks later.

Barry pulls back the cowl of Forty-Five, looks at Fifty-One, and smiles broadly.

"It's bright," he says, taking it in his hands.

 _Like the future_ , Cisco does not reply, grinning when Barry Flashes into it.

"How do I look?"

Cisco gives him a once-over, but he's smiling before the words even come out of his mouth: "Heroic."

. o .

Two weeks later, Barry Flashes into the cortex holding Caitlin, breathless and euphoric at once.

When Cisco's eyes register more than a blur, he sees that Caitlin's hair is white and her lips are blue. His stomach _drops_ , a terror unlike anything he has known before overtaking him. They've wintered-over together, survivedstorms, but now she's _become_ one and Cisco can't do this without her, he can't, he _refuses_ —

But even as Barry stands there holding her, her arms wrapped around his neck, the white retreats and red infuses her lips, a single meaningful shiver Barry's only response to the icy contact as he sets her down gently.

Cisco has his arms around her in a second, overcome with relief, feeling Barry's warmth on her skin as the ice retreats from her eyes. Next to her, Cisco can see the glow: Fifty-One is brilliant, bright, stratospheric. It looks good on Barry and even better next to her.

 _We did it_.

Harry's Speed trap won't hold Zoom for long, but with Caitlin in their midst, Cisco feels the strength of the suit, of the speedster it accompanies, and knows that they'll be okay. And with Caitlin in his arms, he feels safe, secure: _whole_.

Wally Flashes into view, Jesse right on his heels, energized, electric.

"You ready for round two?" Wally asks, looking at Barry and cracking his knuckles, showing off a silvery-red Fifty-Two. He was born to run in silver: it has the perfect contrast, a brilliant, magnetic sheen which draws the eye and deflects attention at once. He can hide in plain sight: getting a verifiable read on his face is almost impossible beneath all of that beautiful chrome.

Jesse's deep red Fifty-Three complements Barry's red Fifty-One nicely: when her shoulder tucks against Barry's, the burgundy tone offers a pleasing contrast. It suits Wally, too: the shade is the same as Wally's accents. Magnetically drawn towards each other, the three speedsters in the room converge briefly, discussion flying by at super speed. Cisco catches exactly none of it before Barry hugs both Caitlin and he in a brief but sincere hug, Flashing out of sight a moment later with Wally and Jesse.

On the intercom, Barry asks, " _You got my back, Cisco?_ "

Dazed but recovering quickly, Cisco steps up to the mic. "Is that a trick question?" he asks, buzzing in the comms. "Let's _go_."

. o .

Zoom doesn't die.

Cisco doesn't actually know what happens to him: no matter how convincingly Barry illustrates it on the board, it still doesn't make sense to him. All he gathers is _limbo_. Something to do with boxing a speedster into a time-cage by shutting both doors. He shudders at the thought: had the wormhole collapsed before they made it to Earth-2 or back to Earth-1, _he_ would have been trapped in limbo with no possibility for escape.

But he doesn't pity Zoom. Like suits, promises fail. A temporary stop-gap might put the brakes on the situation long enough to take care of the metahumans, but they haven't seen the last of him.

Even so, there is joy in their exhaustion. There is joy in the entire endeavor, in the way Caitlin immediately takes charge, still _herself_ even if Cisco can't deny the Elsa effect any more than he can his ability to Vibe. There is joy in the way the suits have found homes: in the way a method for moving time has become a method for celebrating it, too.

In the game of speedsters, every second counts. In Cisco's life, many have been spent in silence, alone. He continues saving the world not on the streets but in the confines of a lab he acquired because its former owner left Star Labs behind. He's wintered-over at Star Labs, refusing to leave even when the golden novelty of it tarnished, when everyone urged him to bail before the cold, the quiet, the darkness consumed him.

He's come to love Antarctica and the perils it brings: to love being involved in the lives of speedsters and the world of superheroes.

When the others have left and it is him alone in the cortex, Cisco looks up at the three suits.

And he thinks, There will be a Fifty-Four, a Fifty-Five, Fifty-Six.

He thinks, There will be a Fifty-Seven, Fifty-Eight, Fifty-Nine.

There will be more suits.

But he only gets the people they accompany once, each, and he treasures their company.

After all, suits are expendable, breakable, finite.

But Team Flash is family, and family is forever.


End file.
